Strings

1. ANSI C++ can handle sequences of characters called strings.
   
   
2. Strings behave like (but are actually not) a build-in data type such as int or double. They are actually objects of the C++ standard string class (more on that a couple of months from now).
   
   
3. The syntax for declaring an object of type string is:
   
   string stringName;
   
   
4. You must include the header file <string> in order to use the strings.
   
   
5. The string class overloads the = operator to copy one string of any length into another. (More about overloading operators in CS1124.) For example:
   
   stringName = "The 3 rings associated with marriage are: engagement ring, wedding ring, and suffering."
   
   
6. cin and cout, together with the operators >> and <<, are overloaded to perform input and output of strings. cin >> ignores leading whitespaces and reads up to the next whitespace (but does not consume that whitespace). Reading strings this way actually reads words (a sequence of non-whitespace characters) and not lines.
   
   
7. To illustrate the usage of some of the features about the string class, consider the following code:
   
   #include <iostream>
   #include <string>
   using namespace std;
   
   int main( )
   {
   string compoundWord, word1, word2;
   cout << "Enter two separate words: ";
   cin >> word1 >> word2;
   compoundWord = word1 + word2;
   cout << "These words joined together form the string: " << compoundWord << endl;
   
   return 0;
   }
   
   Two words entered from the keyboard are stored separately in strings word1 and word2. They are then concatenated (joined together) by the overloaded operator "+", and assigned to the string compoundWord. The result is then output to the screen.